This study examines regional integration in Africa with a focus on the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, COMESA. COMESA, with roots that go back to the beginning of the 1980?s, is one of the largest and most diverse areas for regional integration in Africa and has currently 19 member countries. The goal of the COMESA co-operation is to become a fully integrated area by the year 2025 that will merge into the African Union (AU). AU will then, in turn, create a fully integrated African continent in a not too far away future.

Climate change is expected to lead to increased rainfall and higher temperatures, among other things. This will have a major impact on our cities. Floods can lead to property damage as well as damages to human and animal health. Higher temperatures will increase the frequency of heat-related health risks and premature deaths. The consequences of climate change will be particularly large in our cities because of the city's morphology with a high amount of paved surfaces and buildings that affect the natural processes in areas such as drainage and absorption of solar radiation.

Purpose: Aims of this paper is to evaluate a comparative study between China and Russia funds in respect of the risks and returns. We also want to examine what has affected the funds in their respective domestic stock market.                                                            Method: The study is based on qualitative methodology to complement the quantitative survey by first gathering of secondary data from Morningstar, and fund manager´s stories on fund and banking companies' websites.  Primary data is conducted by the interview with fund manager. The sample consists of all land funds for China and Russia has found more than 10 years on the stock market.Results and Conclusion: The survey shows that China funds will generate better in decline than Russia Funds in both return and risk-adjusted Sharpe ratio. Because the China funds had better risk diversification and its holdings spread across different industry area while Russia funds is more directed towards oil and gas industry.

This thesis aims at analyzing why the municipality of Flen, in the eastern part of Sweden, has experienced strong depopulation for the last forty years in spite of its relative vicinity to Stockholm. The study uses current theories on regional developement, population theory and theories on regional enlargment to help explain and to evaluate the different regional factors that affect the developement of Flen on the local level. The thesis is primarily focused on the subject of regional policy and strategies to meet regional depopulation. The study also gives a presentation of the strategies of major regional institutions as well as analyzing what impact regional policy have on local policy in the municipality of Flen.Interviews with local officials, politicians and other people representing the population of Flen were carried out to achieve a better understanding of the specific challenges that the municipality faces and of the measures that are taken to meet them. Regional policy in Sweden prioritises measures that promote regional enlargment to link the housing and labour markets together with the regional Infrastructure.

Large-scale land investments is not a new phenomenon, but increasing prices on food and agrofuels have inflated prices on land and has led to an enhanced interest in landinvestments from a range of different actors. The ProSavana project in the Nacala corridor in the Nampula province, northern Mozambique is a large-scale land investment with the purpose of establishing intensive commercial agriculture and is planned to be implemented this year (2013). The project is financed by Brazil and Japan in collaboration with the government of Mozambique. It is not quite clear how large-scale land investments affect the areas they are implemented in and how they can affect the possibilities for sustainable development in these areas. Both opportunities and problems can be observed within the social, economic and ecological dimensions of sustainable development.

The complex, ever growing and changing environment, requires that today's organizations are dynamic and willing to change in order to stand competitive.This awareness has made change number one priority in almost all organizations' agenda.We live in a world that is constantly changing, yet many organizations fail to change successfully. When a change occurs in complex environments with multiple stakeholders, it immediately increases the complexity and the challenges of the change process.A complex situation may arise when, for example, partial outsourcing of the corporate information system Infrastructure. Two of the most difficult challenges that organizations face today is to conduct a successful change process and managing the effect of a change, such as arising expectations. It is very common for change in an organization not to achieve the desired result or that they even fail. There may be a lot of reasons for these failures.

Sweden's drinking water quality is considered to be high partly due to a high quality of the raw water and a well developed sewage Infrastructure. Despite this, there is water contamination that could be prevented by installation of a sophisticated early warning system. Some of the major players in the production of drinking water have already invested in different types of early warning systems to ensure drinking water of high quality. There are various forms of early warning systems where automatic monitoring of E. Coli is an interesting alternative.

Syftet med examensarbete är att studera och ta fram dels i vilken utsträckning virtuella bygg-metoder används inom infrastrukturprojekt idag och dels en arbetsprocess för att använda byggnadsinformationsmodeller (BIM) och 4D-modellering från skisstadiet till färdiga handlingar. Arbetet med denna rapport påbörjades med en kartläggning av vilka programvaror skribenterna hade att tillgå vid sitt universitet, i detta fall Autodesk Infrastructure suite 2014. Examensarbetet är utfört genom fokusgruppintervju med personal från Trafikverket investering. Projektledare, arbetsledare och projektingenjörer valdes att intervjuas för att ta reda på hur mycket 4D, BIM och digitala 3D-projekteringsmetoder egentligen används inom Trafikverket idag. Efter intervjuerna med fokusgruppen så intervjuades ett antal experter inom virtuellt byggande.

Several technical solutions are ready to step forward as the new generation of propellant, and this report aims to explore the possibility of commercializing fuel cell cars. The report is based on current research and data from today's technology and engineering solutions that are estimated to be commercially realized before 2020.A mapping of today?s different fuel cell options has shown that the most suitable fuel cell option is the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, which uses hydrogen as fuel. The report is focusing on a techno-economic well-to-wheel analysis of hydrogen and the energy balance and costs in a system perspective. The basis for this analysis consists of two centralized methods of production, steam methane reforming (SMR), and alkaline water electrolysis.

What is a city? What do we mean when we describe something as urban? In what way should we build the city so that we can achieve a good environment for our own generation and for generations to come? These questions are constantly of interest and they are frequently discussed. It is also important to have considered these questions when working with city-planning. This essay contains a description of and reflections about the recurrent questions in today?s debate about the city and city-planning.

Money by definition is always a subjective human creation. Because of this it is unavoidablethat the physical and mental structure of a specific money system will have an effect on thesociety where it is circulating. With this fact as a starting point, the thesis is analysing whetherthe Swedish national currency, the crown, is consistent with a sustainable development. Theaim of the analysis is to: (a) identify the major shortcomings of the Infrastructure of the crownin relation to its ability to support a sustainable development, (b) evaluate what possiblesolutions there are at hand to adjust for the shortcomings. The method used is purely based ontheoretical analysis, with emphasis on abstraction and causal simplicity.In a modern society, money is not only circulating as coins and bills, but also as digital assetstransferred directly between bank accounts.

In the year of 2011, the new CEO of AB Volvo announced a major reorganization. This reorganization was a contributing factor to the start-up of this thesis.Volvo Group Logistics Services (VGLS) is Volvo Group?s global logistics partner, which designs, manages and optimizes all of the group's incoming and outgoing logistics flows. With the reorganization, VGLS started a project regarding responsibilities around railway flows. Within the project a demand to collect logistics requirements occurred.

While the technological Infrastructure that enables collaboration between municipalities, counties and private health care providers improves, so does the need for health-care providers to gain access to the right patient journal at the right time. For doctors, nurses and other health-care organization employees this goal is achieved by NPÖ, National Patient Summary. NPÖ effectively enables health-care records to be shared across organizational boundaries. This thesis is based on a demand by a mobile application that can give district nurses access to health-care records wherever they are.This thesis describes the development of a prototype of a mobile application aimed for NPÖ. This includes investigating a suitable mobile platform, investigating available card readers for reading electronic identification from SITHS cards and the ability to connect to external services such as NPÖ.

The municipalities of Sweden have a great responsibility when it comes to adapt the physical planning to a more sustainable development. The development of the society depends upon the growth of new communities and other public services, but to build new communities in a long-term sustainable manner you need good methods and guidance. This study presents four sustainability certification scheme intended to improve and adapt the planning, implementation and performance of new communities and Infrastructure project to more sustainable methods based on economic, ecological and social sustainability. These systems are the latest versions of environmental classifications and similar rating schemes, but with a broader focus since they also include the social aspect of sustainability.This study aims to investigate what role sustainability certification schemes can play in local planning for sustainable development. The study compares the certification systems criteria to the tools and goals that the Swedish municipalities have been provided with, to lead efforts towards a more sustainable society.

An increasing number of automotive supplier companies are investing in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in order to gain cost advantages. This has happened in a rapid pace since many of these countries did not have any foreign direct investments (FDI) at the turn of the century. The problem now is for how long these countries will be able to maintain the low costs. One purpose was to create a model of country advantages for automotive supplier companies when relocating further production to CEE. This dissertation was written in cooperation with the Trelleborg Group.